Work Motivation & Organizational Behavior: Wilson Brothers Case Study Essay.

Poor Utilization of Job Design

Discuss about the Work Motivation in Organizational Behavior.

Globalization and economic crisis have forced Wilson Brothers to rethink its strategies and change the ways in which the organization is designed and structured as well as how they operate. Wilson Brothers Limited started diverting their focus from the market to products and the competitors. As a result, many piecemeal transformative initiatives were launched instead of switching and advancing the overall organizational design and structure (Argyris, 2017). The company structure, duties, roles, and functions became realigned with the new company aim/objective. Currently, the company is expanding its food supply to outside the US, Europe, and other international markets in an attempt to ensure that all available global markets are exposed and adequately reached (Jones & Jones, 2010). The company has succeeded both locally and internationally due to the use of advanced organizational designs and structures that conform to the nature of the market and this is a major advantage of the new structures established by the company. The use of systems approach helps the company gain these achievements.

The manner in which a job is designed significantly affects employee motivation, employee engagement and commitment to the firm, workers turnover, job satisfaction, and absenteeism. Managers are tasked with the responsibility to plan the work which is supposed to be undertaken by the employees. In this case study, the company has failed to establish job appraisal programs for employees and also failed to spell out a proper succession plan for the company. As a result, the job design at the company is poorly utilized. The commitment of employees to the sales work is minimal and discouraged by the company's inability to establish performance appraisal mechanisms in which their efforts are measured and rewarded (Tims, Bakker & Derks, 2013). Hardworking employees are not rewarded hence lack job satisfaction; this leads to increased cases of absenteeism. The company should launch appraisal programs in order to reward employees fairly and ensure that they are satisfied working for the company. There is need to apply the contingent approach in making such decisions.

First and foremost, Wilson Brothers have quicker decision making approaches and more flexible operations when compared to its key competitors. The management makes decisions in a fast manner and ensures that ideas, thoughts, and inputs of every stakeholder are considered in forming the final decisions (Sethuraman & Suresh, 2014). Launching a new product in the market requires the company to take only a couple of weeks. Second, Wilson Brothers seek to hire a local executive as the company's CEO immediately they expand their business operations to foreign market with an aim of respecting the local culture. Recently, the company decided to hire a Canadian to be the VP Finance so as to ensure the financial reports consistently comply with Canadian GAAP across all its industrial operations. Finally, the Wilson brothers decided to maintain their company non-union status and operations flexibility. However, the management needs to establish a union status in its attempt to enhance operations flexibility (Robbins & Judge, 2012). The decision-making approach will guide them in implementing these decisions.

At Wilson Brother Company, policies and rules governing employee equity and fair treatment have not been established. There is no employee equity and fairness when it comes to remuneration, promotions, salary increment, new employees’ selection criteria, and team leadership. Further, there are no job descriptions of each employee position in the company, and this creates a conflict of roles since there is little or no specialization and division of labor. Further, the company has failed to establish performance reviews for the subordinate staff; also there are no well-established termination policies (Miner, 2015). Executives, managers, and subordinate are recruiting at starting salaries based on their negotiation skills and not by merit. As a result, most employees feel discouraged and have less morale in working for the company. Wilson Brother should, therefore, establish equity and fair treatment policies, performance reviews, employee termination policies, and standards of recruiting new employees in order to enhance equity.

Excellent organizational cultures were the main reason for Wilson Brothers Limited exponential growth.  The two brothers were culturally sensitive. Every time they expanded their business operations to international markets, they hired a local executive as the CEO of that region in order to respect the local culture and integrate all business practices in the culture. Further, hard work was a business culture that the two brothers possessed. They valued hard work and worked between ten to twelve hours a day until they retired. This has been the organization's culture and all employees are hardworking salespeople. The top and middle management teams work for the same hours since this is the culture. Further, the company recruits skilled salespeople who are outgoing. These cultures continue driving the company from one level to another in terms of performance. The dual factor this is effective in driving this motive.

There are various organizational changes that have been implemented by the two brothers. First, they have been recruiting a new CEO from every location they expand their food supply services to globally. Second, the two brothers assigned a Canadian executive as the VP Finance to ensure that the financial reports of the company conform to Canadian GAAP. However, several changes need to be implemented to improve the organization’s performance. These changes include; setting employment policy in relation to employment and pay equity, the establishment of job evaluation techniques, launching of bonuses to sales to workers, and the establishment of proper employee job termination terms and conditions (Daft, 2015). Currently, the two brothers are under pressure to implement a management succession plan for the company that will be used when they retire. The needs theory together with the contingent theory is constantly consulted.

Equity and Fair Treatment Policies

Wilson Brother Limited greatly benefits from excellent teamwork witnessed among all levels of employees. The two brother offer sufficient support to all employees to ensure that they are comfortable while undertaking their mandates within the enterprise. Further, the company implements strategic decisions that cut across all employee levels and consider their ideas, thoughts, and opinions in forming final decisions. Further, when teams raise concerns about the management, the two brothers promptly respond to ensure that all operations move smoothly with little or no complaints. Strategies formulated by the two brothers are supported throughout the whole organization and implemented in a timely manner something which leads to quick product launches to the market. However, the company needs to revise the team size since currently the size of teams is small and thus unable to undertake all roles accurately. Big sizes will ensure that different employees with different talents are grouped together hence enhance creativity and innovation. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is used here until employees reach self-actualization.

There is a conflict of interest between the company and the employees. First and foremost, the organization does not offer bonuses to all employees except the sales and marketing team who are commission salaried and this has established a major conflict. Second, lack of a clear description of job termination of an employee by the company creates a conflict between the two since employees operate under pervasive fear about their job security. Further, all employee desire to be appraised based on their performance, but the company has no performance evaluation initiative something which establishes organizational politics in the company which leads to conflicts (Pinder, 2014). Finally, the company’s failure to design policies that govern employees’ equity and fair treatment creates conflicts when some employees realize they are discriminated against in terms of pay, promotion, and bonus payments. The company needs to revise its hiring, compensation, succession and termination plans in order to resolve these intense conflicts from taking roots in the company. The use of equity theory must be evident here.

The leadership management style is poor. The two brothers have not established any succession plan to take effect that time when they will retire from their director roles. This could be so damaging to Wilson Brothers when they retire and could even make the company collapsed as a result. Although the brothers were very intelligent in deciding to hire local CEOs so as to respect the business local culture and integrate their culture into business activities, and were able to manage their foreign markets given their cultural sensitivity; these initiatives were helpful in enhancing the company's productivity and raising its public reputation but could not depict excellent leadership style on their side (McShane & Von Glinow, 2013). In future, the new CEO in partnership with the two brothers should design the company's succession plan in order to secure the company's assets and ensure the business operates as a going concern even after the two bros retire. Expectancy theory has to be used to understand the internal and external expectations about the company.

To begin with, the Wilson Brothers establish excellent relationships with their clients by utilizing effective negotiation skills as salespeople. As a result, the company grew in the Canadian market as well as other international markets. During this period, all employees at Wilson Bros were excited and proud of working and enjoying success in the company. High sense of motivation enabled employees performs at their best levels hence maximizing the company’s productivity in all its markets. Employees showed this pride by wearing jackets that displayed Wilson Bros Logo at the front and back. However, meetings in the organization are irregular and this harms the two brothers’ influence on the employees’ performance and motivation. Important to note, the two brothers attend two meetings with the team among all the significant meetings planned on a monthly basis (Choi, 2011). Attending the meeting twice is not benefiting the employees and is derailing the power of influence in the team. The two brothers should therefore regularly attend team meetings in order to motivate and influence employees given their power positions in the company.

References

Argyris, C. (2017). Integrating the Individual and the Organization. Routledge.

Choi, M. (2011). Employees' attitudes toward organizational change: A literature review. Human Resource Management, 50(4), 479-500.

Daft, R. L. (2015). Organization theory and design. Cengage learning.

Jones, G. R., & Jones, G. R. (2010). Organizational theory, design, and change.

McShane, S., & Von Glinow, M. (2013). M Organizational Behavior. New York, New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Miner, J. B. (2015). Organizational behavior 1: Essential theories of motivation and leadership. Routledge.

Miner, J. B. (2015). Organizational behavior 4: From theory to practice. Routledge.

Pinder, C. C. (2014). Work motivation in organizational behavior. Psychology Press.

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. (2012). Essentials of organizational behavior.

Sethuraman, K., & Suresh, J. (2014). Effective leadership styles. International BusinessResearch, 7(9), 165.

Tims, M., Bakker, A. B., & Derks, D. (2013). The impact of job crafting on job demands, job resources, and well-being. Journal of occupational health psychology, 18(2), 230.